Robinhood CEO Predicts Sports Will Become Minority of Prediction Markets

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said crypto-linked event contracts are already taking an outsized share of trading on the company’s prediction markets and predicted that sports contracts — currently the industry’s dominant category — will fall into the minority within a few years. Tenev made the remarks in a CNBC “Mad Money” interview published Sept. 18, 2026, recorded earlier that week at Robinhood’s Menlo Park headquarters.

“A lot of people look at it and say, ‘Well, this is just sports. It’s all sports.’ But we’re already seeing other categories like crypto taking a disproportionate share,” Tenev told host Jim Cramer. “And I think within a few years, sports will actually be in the minority.” He described sports contracts as “sort of like a wedge” that brought in users, liquidity and interest, comparing the expected shift to active trading at large, while adding that “the industry is also expanding far beyond sports.” Tenev’s projection is his own: an Aug. 17 Congressional Research Service report noted that, at its publication, the vast majority of trading volume on prediction-market exchanges industry-wide remained concentrated in sports and associated parlay-style products.

The numbers behind the claim

Robinhood’s event-contract business has grown rapidly by the company’s own reporting. Its second-quarter 2026 results, announced July 29, showed event-contract revenue of $156 million, up more than 10x year over year, with a record 13.6 billion event contracts traded — also up more than 10x. Over the same quarter, cryptocurrencies transaction revenue fell 38% year over year to $100 million. Robinhood defines event contracts as contracts traded through its Prediction Markets Hub in $0.01 increments up to $1, with each contract worth $1 upon settlement.

The company’s Q2 earnings presentation shows $17 million of the $156 million in event-contract revenue came from Rothera, the exchange launched in June, where 2.1 billion event contracts traded in the quarter. Rothera’s count covers trades on the Rothera Exchange from both Robinhood customers and other exchange participants.

More recent figures show rapid annual growth alongside a sequential pullback. Robinhood’s Sept. 10 operating-data release reported 4.7 billion event contracts traded in August — up 15x year over year but down 23% from July’s 6.1 billion, with average daily volume of 152 million contracts, also down 23% from July.

A multi-venue build-out

Tenev’s comments come as Robinhood spreads its prediction-market order flow across more venues. The company launched Rothera in June 2026, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse independently managed through Robinhood’s joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, with more than 3.5 billion contracts traded as of the July 29 release.

Robinhood also announced it would begin routing a selection of football event contracts to OG.com beginning Sept. 8. OG.com is the trader-focused platform operating alongside Crypto.com’s CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, which does business as Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA). Event contracts on Robinhood continue to be routed to Kalshi, ForecastEx and Rothera alongside the new arrangement, the company said.

As part of the deal, Robinhood said it will hold equity stakes in Crypto.com and OG.com following OG.com’s planned spin-off as an independent trading platform, with the equity priced in line with Citadel Securities’ recent investment in Crypto.com Group at a $20 billion valuation. That step is planned, not completed. The company also reported that customers have traded more than 45 billion contracts since launch roughly two years ago, including more than 30 billion this year through the end of August.

Tenev’s pitch, and the gambling question

In the interview, Tenev argued prediction markets fit Robinhood’s broader “ownership” thesis — that “a society where more people own high-quality financial assets is inherently a more stable society.” Prediction markets, he said, let users “monetize an idea or an insight,” pointing to Robinhood’s market on the Clarity Act crypto market-structure bill and its Fed-rate contracts as examples.

Pressed by Cramer on how he guards against too much gambling on the platform, Tenev called active traders “the engine room and the foundation of our business,” arguing that products built for traders pull customers into longer-term offerings. He noted that the one product Robinhood directly incentivizes is retirement saving, through a 3% contribution match for Gold members, and said the company sees customers arriving through prediction markets, stock trading and crypto before adopting other products, including retirement accounts.

Pushback in Washington

The industry’s growth has drawn a legislative response. The CRS report, R49266, cataloged more than 30 bills and resolutions touching prediction markets introduced in the 119th Congress, spanning subject-matter prohibitions, ethics rules and regulatory overhauls.

On April 30, 2026, the Senate adopted S.Res. 708, amending Senate Rule 37 to prohibit Senators, Senate officers and Senate employees from trading event contracts, with an exclusion for insurance for which the insured holds a lawful insurable interest. As a Senate rule, the prohibition does not extend to House members, other legislative branch employees, or executive or judicial branch officials. Among pending bills, H.R. 8076, the PREDICT Act, would go further for a defined group: it would prohibit members of Congress — including their spouses, dependents and fiduciary representatives — as well as officers and employees of Congress, the President and Vice President, political appointees, covered executive branch officers or employees, and judicial officers and employees from trading prediction-market contracts dependent on a “specific political event,” a term the bill does not define and leaves to supervising ethics offices to interpret.

Legal uncertainty for sports event contracts

The sports category Tenev expects to shrink is also under court challenge. On Aug. 28, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel in KalshiEX v. Assad held that Kalshi had not shown a likelihood that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts Nevada’s gaming regulations as applied to its sports event contracts — concluding the contracts are likely not “swaps” under the CEA — and affirmed the dissolution of a preliminary injunction that had blocked Nevada enforcement. The panel also concluded Kalshi’s self-certification and listing of the contracts was unlawful under the CEA’s Special Rule and the CFTC’s existing regulation, 17 C.F.R. § 40.11, which currently bars listing gaming-related contracts. The ruling came at the preliminary-injunction stage, framed on likelihood of success rather than a final merits judgment, and the panel remanded for the district court to consider Nevada’s challenges to Kalshi’s election contracts.

The opinion acknowledged a developing split: the Third Circuit had affirmed a preliminary injunction for Kalshi in New Jersey in the Flaherty case, while a Fourth Circuit appeal of a Maryland decision denying Kalshi an injunction remained pending. The outcome matters across the industry because sports event contracts account for the bulk of current prediction-market volume and are offered by multiple venues, including those Robinhood routes orders to.